Cav's Place

When I wrote the previous post in this series, I definitely didn’t think I’ll add another by the end of the year and get to those planned 15 bands included this year, but here I am, adding it now. Whether anyone reading will consider this post as including four bands or just two, it’ll still be enough, since I just need two to get to 15. It’ll be a quick post though, just throwing it here, but this is still a whole lot better than not writing it at all and just throwing band names on that list, only to forget about them soon after.

The first band is Orion’s Reign, which I had apparently first stumbled upon long ago, but this year they released their second album, ten years after their first full one. But I actually stumbled upon them again now due to what seems to be their tradition of releasing metal covers of Christmas songs every year, providing a playlist with them on their YouTube channel. Now it’s very odd for me to listen to something like that, but if they would sound like their cover of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, I might, because I found myself quite stuck on that after accidentally stumbling upon it. Other than that, could also link to Nostos, but that also features Minniva, who seems to work with them a fair bit but isn’t actually a band member, so I really should link to one of their actual songs too, and for that I’ll go with Ride to War.

And then there are three projects led by the same guy, or the same two brothers at least, though one sure seems keen to put his name on them, the one I actually stumbled upon being called Marius Danielsen’s Legend of Valley Doom, not that I found anything else called “Legend of Valley Doom” to require something like this, so I’ll just call it like that. The second is Eunomia, which seems to share the story but perhaps have a more typical power metal sound, while Legend of Valley Doom seems to go for a more “epic” sound. The third, Darkest Sins, sounds rather different, and I’m not keen on that sound, but just adding it here for good measure.
To get Darkest Sins out of the way, I see two official videos posted, so I’ll just link to those, Domineer and Fear. Eunomia, on the other hand, seems to only have one official video, for Last Stand, but I’ll go with Eternity as the second pick, out of the few others I could find on a quick search, though this upload may of course vanish. As for Legend of Valley Doom, what’s released under that name is available on the guy’s Bandcamp, so you can pick what you prefer. Since I didn’t listen to what’s there now though, I’ll just select from his YouTube channel, Tower of Knowledge and Visions of the Night. What I did here doesn’t fit the rule I try to follow when selecting songs to link to, but I did say that this was a quick post.

I included eight bands in the previous post in this series, so was thinking I had a real chance to get to a total of 15 this year even if I won’t manage three posts, but that’s not going to happen. In fact, considered just including four in this one, since I’m in a hurry and just had the first three in mind and the fourth caught my eye rather quickly after glancing through a few names on my list, since I’ve been listening to a couple of their songs a fair bit relatively recently, but hadn’t yet checked that previous post at the time, so spent some more time looking for something else and decided to just go with one with a potential connection with the fourth, even though neither should really be in these posts. If I’d have remembered having eight in that previous post, I’d have definitely stopped at four in this one, making for a total of 12, 13 bothering me a bit. But now that I selected it, might as well…

The most recent band I stumbled into is Silent Tales, which seems to have recently returned to activity after a long break, at least in terms of releases, since I see albums in 2003, 2006 and 2018, with this latest one also being posted on their YouTube channel, the only other actual song posted there being Raven Circle, from the same album. Other than that, there’s an instrumental posted in 2013 that doesn’t seem to be from any album and could find one more, from their first album, but that seems to be it, so no idea what their older stuff really sounded like. But this recent album isn’t bad at least, and you can just listen to all of it and pick what you like, if anything. Personally find at least Thought and the Memory, Eternal River and When the Star Falls to be quite good.

Next is Dead of Night, a band I had apparently first stumbled into quite a few years ago, ending up one of the hundreds thrown on the list and probably never listened to again, but a post reminded me of them recently and I found that they split up, so I’m not sure how right it is to include them here, but I will nevertheless. You can even download a number of their songs by following the link in a post made shortly after they split up, and I’m quite sure the original version of The Highwayman was the song that initially made me consider them interesting, and despite being one of their oldest this was also the one I saw posted again recently. Still, with those free downloads not including anything from their last album, I guess I should pick something to share from that one too, and after a quick glance through what’s readily available on their YouTube channel, guess I’ll go with For I Am Music. Quite a different sound though, and I care for it much less than I do about their earlier stuff, especially when it comes to the instrumental bits.

And the third band I originally had in mind for this post is Solborn, and you can just listen to their album, and at the time I’m writing this seven of the nine tracks are on their YouTube channel too. If the two bands listed above are the most recent I stumbled into that seemed in some way interesting and the older find that I was most recently reminded of, I can say that this is the most recent find that rather impressed me. The sound quality and mixing could be better, but most songs are good, though they may take a while to actually get going, and I’ll point that out by actually suggesting Beast of Oblivion, which includes growls, and say that I liked it overall in spite of that. Other than that, take your pick, but I guess my second one will be the one non-instrumental song that’s not yet on their YouTube channel, Pale Blue.

Next would be a, shall we say, middleweight, Beast in Black. One bad consequence of that is that they have their songs posted on Deezer, which requires logging on in order to listen, but at least they are somewhere. The band was apparently created by the guy kicked out of Battle Beast, who sure seems to have landed on his feet. Male-fronted bands are unusual in these posts of mine, and this isn’t even the sort of sound I’d be tempted to say I like even with male vocals, but found myself quite stuck on Blind and Frozen and Ghost in the Rain for a while. And that should be enough, but since they did just recently release a new song, which should be from their next album, I’ll link to Sweet True Lies as well, to have songs from different albums here.

And the fifth band will be The Dark Element, whose vocalist you may remember was in Nightwish. And now that I looked it up, I see that the band is actually made up of her and most of a supergroup called Cain’s Offering. Still say her voice doesn’t quite fit the genre, but for anyone interested, they do seem to have managed to get something interesting enough out of it. I’ll just pick from the official uploads, even though other songs may be better, so I’ll link to the two videos released at the moment, The Ghost and the Reaper and My Sweet Mystery. Then again, the lyric video for Someone You Used to Know also claims to be official, despite being on a different channel, and I already broke the previous rule of two songs, if at all possible from two different albums, more than once in this post, so I’ll add this too, because it’s a different sort of song, and I’d say it suits her better.

I keep saying that I want to post at least two posts in this series each year and at least I seem to be posting the first one before the end of the year’s first half. Interestingly, last year’s first one was also on the first Sunday of June, though that meant the 4th then. But that one only included the usual five bands, while this time I’m hoping to get to eight, which would be the most included in such a post so far, if you don’t include those I just happened to mention in passing in a paragraph about one of those I did actually mean to include. This will also give me a chance to get to that goal of 15 bands included in such posts in a year even if I won’t add a third, assuming I’ll somehow add seven in a second. But I never managed 15 in a year so far, so definitely don’t count on that.
Before getting to the bands though, I want to mention another YouTube channel, Metal Bands with Female Voices II, which has full albums. It probably won’t last long, the original one having already been deleted for copyright violations, but at the moment you can have a look. I won’t be linking to anything from there though, sticking to official uploads, and to the usual rule of two songs, preferably from different albums if possible, per band. The bands won’t really be new finds though, since I rather avoided looking lately, not even paying much attention to what I happened to see posted, so I started from one I wanted to include due to being rather stuck, on and off, on a song posted in April, then continued with a Romanian one I also wanted to add, but after that it was a matter of looking through names, searching for countries that I happened to think of, and picking what ended up as being six others. However, it just so happens that two of them have just released new albums, two others released new albums earlier this year, and one is about to release a video, even if for an older song.

That first band I wanted to include is Temperance, and the song I got rather stuck on at various times since it was posted is Broken Promises. As for a pick from an older album, I guess I’ll go with Me, Myself & I, after just going through the few uploaded by that annoying label that makes their bands delete their accounts on sites like Bandcamp, ReverbNation or SoundCloud and the proper songs posted on their YouTube accounts, adding what they want on their own accounts instead. But to go back to the band itself, it’s not actually a new find either, as I seem to remember first stumbling into them years ago, but what I heard at the time made me dismiss them. Definitely changed my opinion now…

The Romanian band I mentioned above is Lion’s Roar, which so far only seems visible at the Romanian Eurovision selection. Their first appearance was last year, with I Set You Free, while this year… You know, I think I’ll go with Nothing in Between, even if people didn’t actually get to hear it, since they had apparently submitted two songs and this one was rejected in the preselection. And I do hope they’ll release some more material and try to make themselves heard again before next year’s Eurovision selection, because they sound quite nice, and while it was a good strategy to make themselves heard the first time, it’s not like they had any success in that selection anyway.

Getting back to Italy, I think it’s been a few years since I first stumbled into Desdæmona, but the name caught my attention again now and I see that they seem about to release a video for Invisible Thread, so I’ll go with that as the first pick, while for the second… Let’s say Shipwreck. Quite an interesting voice there. Probably not something I could get stuck on, but it made me remember them after quite some time. Admittedly, didn’t know why I remembered them, realizing that this was the reason once I started listening, but that should be good enough too, right?

While at some point I seem to have stumbled into another, which has since split up, The Loudest Silence seems to be the only band from Bosnia and Herzegovina that caught my attention at some point and is still active, and Friday they just released their first album. Not much uploaded at the moment, but can definitely recommend listening to The Loudest Silence, even if it does strike me as odd to have a song with the same name as the band when they managed to find a different name for the album. The second pick will have to be Wood Nymph, but I hope there are better songs on that album. Didn’t listen to anything other than what they posted so far, but what I can say is that they seem to have some potential with a certain kind of sound, yet it doesn’t work so well if they try other things.

A band that really seems to be the only one from its country that caught my attention so far is Dream Ocean, from Turkey. That seems somewhat odd, as the music scene should be rich enough over there, but there’s the question of how many sing in English and, either way, I guess I just didn’t happen to stumble into any others that I’d find interesting. So I’ll just look at this one band I know of and pick from the few songs they uploaded, since that’s all I listened to. Guess I’ll go with Forever and Everstorm, as parts of that other one bother me, so wondering which of the sounds is more present on the album in general. Nice voice, so I’d say they should focus more on that and leave out those heavier instrumental parts I noticed there.

The remaining three bands are from Hungary and all of them have been around for quite a while, but while Ideas is well over a decade older than the other two, it may be the one I most recently heard of, close to the end of last year. It seems that they just recently changed their vocalist, and since that happened after releasing their most recent album, what I can listen to and pick from may not quite reflect how they’ll sound now, but I see that they have had other changes in the past as well, albeit long ago, and they only have what they released since the previous change of vocalist on their YouTube channel. Then again, that also means what they released since YouTube was created, and it’s hard enough to pick anyway, so have a look if you’re interested in more. But I’ll stick to the usual rule and, more or less randomly, pick Just Call Me from that most recent album and Hide Your Heart as an older song. And yes, they do have the songs in both Hungarian and English, which seems like quite a lot of work, but I’m obviously only listening to the English versions.

Then there’s Obsidian Shell, which I believe I heard of a few years ago. They also went through a few different vocalists, but I’ll just try to pick one song from their most recent album, released a little more than a week ago, and one more from one of the others. As such, I’ll go with Land of Wonders and Endsequence, but those are songs I preferred after rushing through what’s available and they are a bit different from most others, so feel free to listen to whatever and wherever you want. Not sure how much I like that they have something that sounds like the soundtrack of an old game in their songs, but it does make it interesting. Definitely don’t like the harsh male vocals on what I understand to be the first album with their current vocalist, however, and I’m pleased that they gave up on that idea.

Finally, Dharma is a band I recall adding with mixed feelings, most of what I heard being of a different genre, but I’m quite sure that Dive Deeper is the reason why I ended up adding them after all, so that has to be my first pick. Otherwise, they don’t seem to have uploaded anything from their latest album, and I’m just going through what they have on their YouTube channel, because otherwise it’d be too much again and I’m not sure how much it’d help anyway. To have the second pick from a different album as well, I’ll have to go with One By One. But, again, this is something for those who prefer a genre that’s different from what I’d usually listen to.

For quite a while I didn’t think I was going to finish this post today, and initially posted it with only the first five bands, to be sure I’ll have something here in case there will be any problems, possibly due to the storm that seemed to be coming, then updated it after adding Ideas and Dharma, and then added Obsidian Shell as well, since there was a lot to go through, even while rushing, in order to pick which songs to link to. But now it’s all done, with quite some time to spare before midnight, and I may really have a chance to get to 15 bands included in such posts this year. But, again, not promising anything.

Leaving the year’s second post in this series very late again, but at least it’s not the very last day again, so it could be worse. It’ll just include the usual five bands, so I’m not only failing that tentative goal of including 15 bands in such posts over the course of a year but also that of at least including more than ten, but this time around the five bands will be from the same country, namely Greece. The one I wanted to start with is from there, a new song that was recently posted meant I was just reminded that I was rather stuck on an older song of the second some time ago yet never included them in such a post, a previous vocalist of said second band led my mind to the third, and having the first three happen to be from the same country made me look for others from there that I had stumbled into over the years, remembering that I actually quite recently heard of the fourth as well. The fifth is somewhat forced, as I had something else in mind and their sound makes me say they’re not something I’d particularly want to include in such a post, but they have an album released this year, so decided to add them and make it five out of five.

That said, the band I mentioned above I knew I wanted to start with is Chrysilia, and that’s because I got really stuck on Desperate Wings when I first bumped into them, a few months ago. With The Menalon Trail being the only other original song they make available at the moment and the rest of their debut album not popping up right away at a quick search, this will be the second pick and it’s a good one as well, but Desperate Wings definitely fixed them in my mind and I found myself coming back to it quite a few times over these past few months, after listening to it many times on repeat at first. Like I already said, don’t know anything about the rest of their debut album, but judging by these, they’re something to keep eyes, and ears, on.

Next is Meden Agan, who have just released No Escape off their upcoming album, scheduled to be released in January. The song that made me keep them in mind is much older, however, and I’m referring to Everlasting Pain. They had a different vocalist then, but they seem to change them every album, since I actually remember them with Iliana as well, though I’m not sure whether that means I first bumped into them that long ago or I just looked up older songs when Everlasting Pain made me pay attention. Both may be true, as in I knew of them already, but only dug around more after getting stuck on that song. Either way, definitely knew of them for years and I’m a bit surprised I didn’t include them in such a post yet.

Since I mentioned Iliana, Enemy of Reality is the obvious next band I’ll list here, though they don’t have an album released this year. They’re not a band I recall paying particular attention to at any point, though I listened to Needle Bites a few times back when they released that video. So I’ll go with that as the first song I’ll link to here, and the more recent In Hiding as the second. Now that I just listened to what they make available, something definitely rubs me the wrong way about their sound, the songs don’t seem to flow, they seem complicated in a way that makes it rather a negative thing, but there are good bits as well, and Iliana definitely has quite a voice. If the “musical differences” that supposedly led to her parting ways with Meden Agan mean that this sound is her preference, I’d personally say it’s quite a pity, but that’s of course a matter of taste.

Moving on, Forbidden Lore is another actual recent find and the two picks are easy because they only have two songs available, Endless Run and Grace in Our Fall. A third song seems to have been included on the EP released last year, and at the time they were apparently all available for free download, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. So there’s little material released so far, but it’s nevertheless enough to show a fair amount of promise.

As for the fifth band, that’s Bare Infinity and you can listen to the album they released this year on Bandcamp. As I already said, not particularly keen on their sound on it, so I’m going to pick Robin’s Eyes to link to, because it’s rather different from the rest, interestingly seeming to be the only song that their vocalist wrote by herself, in which case I’d say she should do that more often. The second pick, on the other hand, is the much older Always Forever Part I, which is the only one they still have on their YouTube channel from back when they had a different vocalist, so I’ll go with it since I’m in a hurry now, despite the poor audio quality. Personally, after quickly listening to some of their other older songs as well, I clearly prefer how they sounded back then, but that’s again a matter of taste.

I guess that’s it, and just barely in time to post before midnight and make it the week’s second post. Once again, the tentative goal for next year for this series of posts is to include 15 bands, likely in three posts, though the option of two longer posts remains as well. Never had three such posts in a year or more than seven bands in one post, which would be required to have 15 in only two, but who knows, maybe 2018 will be when that will happen. I’ll again say that I really should do at least this little, considering how many good or at least decent bands I keep bumping into.

I’ll start this by pointing out a new channel on YouTube called Metal for Your Soul, which already has quite a number of full metal albums from lesser known bands even though the first ones were only uploaded on April 1. Then again, I’m somewhat surprised it’s still there even now, though I guess the low number of views and the fact that the bands are lesser known explains it and may help it avoid removal for quite a while yet. Don’t be surprised if sooner or later the link will end up pointing to a channel that no longer exists though.

Since I mentioned that channel, the first band I’ll list here is Feridea, which is an older find which doesn’t even have new material since 2015, but which I was reminded of after spotting their two EPs there. There’s barely enough material for one full album if you put them together and they changed the vocalist between the two, but it’s good stuff, perhaps on Into a Dawn in particular, so I’d recommend at least listening to all four songs on that one, which you can find on their YouTube channel. The songs from Reborn in Time aren’t there, but they are on their SoundCloud page. Still, if I’m to stick to the usual pattern of picking two songs per band, I’ll go with Of Magic and Music and… Let’s say Song of a Longing Heart?

The second band I’ll point out today, Vandroya, is both an old and a new find. How does that work? Well, I’m sure I first stumbled into them years ago and Why Should We Say Goodbye? is actually I song I occasionally looked up to listen to again, usually getting pretty stuck on it once again when I did, but when I wanted to check whether their entry on my list also had the proper links after they started being shared again recently due to the launch of Beyond the Human Mind, I noticed that I didn’t have an entry for them at all, so I must have simply forgotten to add them there the first time around. Either way, I didn’t listen to all the songs on this second album yet, but let’s go with You’ll Know My Name out of what I could find. Rather too much focus on the guitars and those solos still bother me, that song actually being particularly plagued by this, but some enjoy this and she sure has a great, powerful voice.

An actual new find is Last Performance, who just released their first album. That sure is an odd choice for a name, but good voice, good sound, so I sure hope they’re not referring to themselves with it. One problem is that they don’t seem keen on posting or sharing much, be it information or songs, even the fact that at least most of the album is on Bandcamp not meaning much when they severely restrict the number of times you can listen to the songs. That sure is an infuriating feature of Bandcamp, by the way, and I’m not going to pick what to share from there when I’m hit with it. As such, I’m limited to what I can find on YouTube, which at the moment is Under Cover of Darkness and End of Pretense. No complaints, however, since they’re definitely good enough for the two picks.

AfterTime is a band I know I wanted to add before, but can’t remember whether that means I first stumbled into them last year, before writing the previous post in this series, or one of the times when I previously thought about writing this post this year was shortly after discovering them and I clearly had them in mind while trying to decide what to include in it. Either way, you can choose between YouTube and Bandcamp to listen to their songs, and I’ll go with All the Ruins Remain and World We’ve Lost as my two picks. Was more impressed with them at first, now I’m less convinced by her voice and not so keen on the sound of some of their other songs, but it remains a good effort and a good direction, and they seem to be improving, at least in my opinion.

As for Walk in Darkness, it was a rather random pick, but I do believe it is also a new enough find. They released their first album earlier this year and you can listen to all of it on Bandcamp, but I guess I’ll go with Carthage and Alexandria as my picks, the latter featuring the voice of Magdalena Lee, whose Tears of Magdalena I mentioned, albeit grudgingly, way back in the third “New Finds” post. Either way, being a rather random pick, it’s not something that exactly impressed or stuck in my mind, but it can be interesting enough, depending on taste.

And that’s about it for now. First post in this series this year, including the regular five bands, so no chance of getting to that target of 15 in only two posts. Whether 2017 will be the first year during which I’ll manage to post three remains to be seen, but there’s a lot of time left, so there’s reason to hope. And considering the number of bands I know of, a fair part of them at least good, some even outstanding, I really should be trying more.